Electroboy (37 page)

July 15, 1997
.

Shortly after my return from Ecuador, I feel a bubbling of old urges and restlessness from the past, and I impulsively fly to Los Angeles to see if I can put in two full days of appointments and meetings. It’s more of a test than anything else. I get my luggage. Pick up car at Avis. Check in at Sunset Marquis. Check messages on answering machine. Meeting with artist interested in representation at his studio. He’s convinced he’s Jackson Pollock. His work is shit and there are so many canvases to go through; I don’t know how to tell him gracefully I’m not interested. So I tell him I have a dinner appointment and that I’ll speak with him soon. I really do have plans for dinner with my college roommate, his wife, and their son at their favorite Mexican restaurant. It’s odd at first to see my roommate, whom I met when he was eighteen, with a three-year-old and his wife, but it makes perfect sense and feels right. Return to Sunset Marquis and hang out at Whiskey Bar for a few hours. Drink two cranberry spritzers. Smoke two Marlboro Lights. There are some rowdy girls from Texas at the bar with a bunch of men, and I’m watching them getting very drunk and feeling very left out.

July 16, 1997
.

I wake up feeling ready for a productive day. Requisite poolside breakfast at hotel: egg-white omelette and fruit salad, $18. Drive to Fred Segal and buy some baby gifts for Annike and her boyfriend, who are living together; she’s due in a month. Lunch with former self-help writer/client at the Palm. Drinks at the Mondrian Hotel with a prospective health-industry client who’s been referred to me by a former author. Dinner with my father’s sister Gloria in the Valley. On the way back, feel like driving past Sunset exit all the way to San Diego (about 130 miles) but only go a few miles past the exit and then turn around and drive back to the hotel. In the past I would have driven all the way to Baja, but I don’t need the thrill and just decide to watch television in my luxuriously anonymous hotel room and get to sleep early. Wake up next morning and leave for airport after another egg-white omelette and fruit salad. I’ve kept myself busy for two days.

When I get back to New York after my two-day L.A. spasm, I wonder if I might be experiencing hypomania, a moderate form of mania in which one exhibits increased energy and rapid speech. Dr. Fried thinks this is probably the case, that I’m definitely not having a manic episode, and she doesn’t feel the need to alter my medication. “I feel kind of normal,” I say. “Normal, but a little crazy,” she says. It’s nice to realize that I’m relatively stable and can assess my own condition. After years of trying, I’m able to keep a close watch on my moods.

Group therapy in midtown Manhattan. It feels like a private club meeting every Monday at noon. I’m sitting at a conference table with six other people—men, women, single, married, divorced—with all sorts of common issues—relationship, family, intimacy, work, and communication. At opposite ends of the table sit our two leaders, Dr. Sternfeld and her colleague, who is taking notes. Some of us are drinking bottled water, some are eating salads and yogurts. We all look around the room. Karen starts off the session
by talking about her ex-husband, an alcoholic, who continues to call her a year after their divorce. Cheryl talks about her struggle with breast cancer and difficulty as a single mother. Paul is having trouble keeping employees at his company. We ask one another questions as we weave from topic to topic. Tammy, who has a pattern of dating married men, surprises us by announcing that she has finally broken off a long-standing relationship. I talk about my fear of becoming sick again and dependent on my family and how real the possibility seems some days. It’s taken me almost a year and a half to figure out that my manic-depressive personality does not define or set me apart in this group. It’s a safe place to talk openly about what’s on my mind and to get feedback.

This illness requires constant vigilance. After several years of being on medication for my manic depression, I develop an awful cold and sinus condition, so I buy the first over-the-counter medication that I see on the pharmacy shelf and take it every four hours for relief. After four days on the medication, I’m sitting in a diner somewhere on the Upper West Side when I become completely confused about what city I’m in and what day it is. My legs are paralyzed. “Just take deep breaths and drink,” my friend Bobbie says. I sip my Diet Coke slowly, but the panic jumps in my veins. I frantically call Dr. Fried on my cell phone, but her message says she’s on vacation, so I call her covering doctor, who doesn’t respond to my page, infuriating me. Bobbie starts dialing for me because I can’t focus on the keypad. My blood pressure is rising and I’m feeling increasingly manic; my thoughts are becoming psychotic. I feel locked inside a globe, like the one I grew up with, showing all of the continents and countries in relief. I’m suffocating underneath South America. I can’t hear very well and can’t concentrate. I think I’m knocking things over on the table. Bobbie holds my arms trying to calm me down, and I attempt to change my tone and the subject. “How are your parents?” I ask her. “They’ve been dead for years,” she tells me. “Oh, poor Claire
and Paul,” I say blurrily. I’d forgotten this and apologize to her. Then I leave slurred and hostile messages on Dr. Fried’s answering machine. When I try to stand up, energy flows from my torso through my legs and I feel like I’m going to crash through the floor and shoot into the basement. I’m scared enough to feel like I want to be rushed to the hospital, but I don’t feel like making a scene. Instead, Bobbie suggests getting some air and returning to my apartment. My legs are stiff, so I shuffle more than ten blocks to my apartment, where we wait for the covering doctor to return my call. He finally calls back three hours later and asks me if I’ve taken any other type of medication. After lecturing him about his delay in returning my page, I tell him the name of the over-the-counter medication I’ve taken and he tells me that’s the cause of my current condition. He assures me I’m not in any immediate danger and suggests I ride it out for a few more hours until I finally fall asleep. This is just a reminder of how easily I can slip into a manic or psychotic episode because my system has become so sensitive to medication, let alone the interaction between medications. Neither he nor Dr. Fried knows which medication the cold medicine interacted with. I should have been wise enough to ask the pharmacist first. I’m relieved that this isn’t going to be a long psychotic episode, but I still have my cold.

My niece’s birthday is coming up, and I want to find the perfect card for a ten-year-old. She’s really grown up so quickly since the day she came home from the hospital, back when I was just getting into trouble selling counterfeit paintings. She knows nothing about that. It’s hard to find just the right card for her because she’s a very particular kid. I buy her a lava lamp. She’ll love it. On my way home I pass a bodega, whose awning shelters row upon row of bright flowers from the February drizzle. I carefully pick out two dozen magnificent white roses for only $8 and carry them home like it’s Valentine’s Day. But they’re just for me. I rummage for the vase that came with the flowers Nancy gave me when I
came home from electroshock treatment at Gracie Square a few years ago, put my finger under the faucet until the water gets cold, fill it all the way up, pour in a packet of the magic plant powder, and then arrange the perfect roses and place them on my cherrywood and slate-top desk next to my computer. They no longer look white against the white walls, but ivory. The stems are bright green and sturdy, supporting the delicate blooms, which I love to stroke with my fingers. They feel silky and are almost translucent. As the days pass, I watch the roses unfold and hear them crackle as they open. I also notice that the water level is decreasing; they are thirsty, and I replenish their supply. Is there anything else I can do for them? I promise to keep them alive until the first day of spring. The roses open to grand proportions I’ve never noticed before. Had I never paid attention? I hear them crackle as I gaze at the screen and hit the keyboard. I stop what I’m doing and stare at them to examine them as they expand. Grasping the vase, I turn the bouquet in a circle and look for the one rose that is really making progress. “There it is,” I shout. “That’s the culprit.” It’s standing taller than the rest, and I can actually see it moving in slow motion. I’m impressed by the beauty of these roses, and all I can do for them is caress the petals lightly and take care of them. “Maybe roses need sunlight,” I think. The room smells fragrant, and I am indebted to each of the twenty-four roses.

This morning I wake up early to check my e-mail. When I look over at the roses, I see that they’re no longer ivory—more beige now, tinged with brown. I try pulling off some of the discolored petals. It helps a little. But they’re becoming shapeless and abstract, no longer the crisp and vital buds I bought a week ago, and they won’t see spring. But I don’t need them to stay perfect anymore. They have their own vanishing beauty, and that’s fine with me.

I could not have written
Electroboy
or completed my recovery without Jennifer Copaken—a true friend and supporter who inspired me every day for almost two years and continues to do so. I met Jen a year after my last electroshock treatment; I was in a confused state, between memory loss and medications, but she held my hand through the process of writing about my manic depression and ECT.
The New York Times Magazine
published my article about ECT, officially heralding my return after eight long years of retirement. Thank you, Jen.

My deepest gratitude goes to Suzanne Gluck, my überagent at the William Morris Agency, for her belief in
Electroboy
from the first moment she listened to my thirty-second pitch. She was steps ahead of me—in a strange sort of way, she had an overall sense of the book before I did. I was wowed by her speed and enthusiasm. Within two weeks she sold the book to Random House; she wasn’t kidding around. A week later, her colleague Alicia Gordon optioned the book for HBO.

Many thanks to Courtney Hodell at Random House for taking the first courageous step in acquiring
Electroboy
. She started from scratch with me and promised that we’d have a book at the end. Courtney allowed me to go where I needed with the manuscript—she made no strict rules—and then started pulling it together and showing me how to make the pieces fit. Her ability to help me tell my story, to make me rethink my experiences and delve into details, was astonishing, and her ongoing patience was enormous. Thanks to her extraordinary assistant, Tim Farrell, for
giving the book organization and structure and for his keen editorial insight. He is a true perfectionist. Tim constantly pushed me to rewrite, keeping the pressure on me up until the very last minute.

Jen’s work with me didn’t stop with that one article on ECT. We spent countless hours in Manhattan coffee shops, where she made lists and drew crazy flow charts for me that took me chapter by chapter. She read and critiqued everything that I wrote, even after she left New York to live in San Francisco with her husband, Todd Yellin, who put up with late-night calls and an emergency visit to the Bay Area.

A very special thank-you to my two primary doctors, for their years of care and concern for me and the time they have invested in helping to keep me as healthy as I am today. I am extremely fortunate to have found both of them. I am also grateful to the six members of my therapy group, who have been together and have supported me for almost three years.

Thank you to my very wise and courageous defense attorney, Stuart Abrams, who fought the toughest battle I’d ever face for me in December of 1993.

Thank you to my sister, Nancy Behrman, who was always there to cry with me and hold my hand and who can always lighten the mood with a good story or some breaking gossip; to Nancy and Nick Davis, my aunt and uncle, who have always shown great interest in and concern for me since I was a small child; and to Ellen Hettinger, a great supporter of me and my family during both the good times and the very difficult ones.

Thank you to Adam Moss for giving me my first writing assignment in New York, at
7 Days
, and the opportunity to write at
The New York Times Magazine
.

Thank you to Hilary Jacobs and Robert Brinkman, two friends who have always shown me great kindness, made me laugh hysterically, and served me great food; to Lucy Lehrer for her friendship and support, especially during my time at Esmor, and for always having the joie de vivre to join me on a bus ride to Atlantic City or a train ride from Paris to Berlin; to Brian Cresto
for his friendship, intuition, and great problem-solving advice, and, when it came to
Electroboy
, his gentle criticism; to Christopher Smith for his constant long-distance encouragement, his sense of humor, and his special brand of cynicism; to Jeannette Walls for teaching me to “take it all with a grain of salt” and convincing me on more than one occasion to keep writing; to Melissa Levine and Scott Rosenthal for their nonstop enthusiasm for
Electroboy
and their loyalty; to Deborah Copaken Kogan for showing me the way one year ago and for all of the reinforcement that she and her husband, Paul, provided throughout this process; to Dr. Andrew Elmore for his positive thinking and optimism; to Judy Cramer for her care, interest, and enthusiasm; to Betsy Marino for a lifetime of laughs and for making me feel good about writing about mental illness; to Marilyn Fletcher for keeping close tabs on me and understanding this chronic illness; to Al Lowman, who pushed me to start writing years ago; to Lindley Boegehold, who told me I could write a book; to Elliot Thomson, who told me I should write this book; to Gregory Marro, who understood how difficult this book was to write; to Kenneth Johnson and Garrick, who checked up on me daily; to Robert Adamo, who helped me maintain my positive attitude; and and to Bobbie Freeman, a talented artist and a unique and remarkably giving woman who stuck by me during the darkest hours of my illness.